Fighting neoliberalism

The Independent People’s Tribunal (IPT) on Land Acquisition, Resource Grab, and Operation Green Hunt was organized in New Delhi from April 9 to 11, 2010 by a collective of civil society groups, social movements, progressive academics, social activists, and concerned citizens. The IPT heard accounts of diverse grass-roots activists from the states of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal, and Jharkhand, the theater of an insidious war — nicknamed Operation Green Hunt (OGH) — that the Indian State has launched against its own people. Supplementing activist accounts and testimonies of witnesses with critical insights and advice of social scientists, journalists, legal experts, former government functionaries, and human rights activists, the people’s jury of the IPT made its opinion known through its interim observations and recommendations, the most urgent of which was to stop OGH and initiate a process of dialogue with the local population in the affected areas. Other recommendations included: immediately stopping all compulsory acquisition of agricultural or forest land and the forced displacement of the tribal people; making the details of all the memorandum of understanding (MOUs) signed for mining, mineral, and power projects known to the public; stop victimizing and harassing dissenters of the government’s policies; withdraw all paramilitary and police forces from schools and hospitals; constitute an Empowered Citizen’s Commission to investigate and recommend action against persons responsible for human rights violations of the tribal communities.

The recommendations of the jury and the countless accounts of activists provide a much-needed alternative perspective on Indian economic growth and development. While the national and international media talk profusely about the unprecedented growth of the Indian economy, as measured by growth of the gross domestic product, it ignores the distributional implications of that growth process and wilfully shies away from looking at the underlying costs of that growth: increasing inequality, forced displacement, dispossession of the most vulnerable sections of society, growing social tensions, and a rapidly growing State terror. The IPT, by giving space to different activist voices from the grass-roots, offers a view of the stinking underbelly of Indian growth.

In trying to facilitate the wider dissemination of the discussions at the IPT, Sanhati has decided to host the background documents and papers and other material presented at the IPT on its website. By hosting these important documents of the emerging peoples’ movement in India, we join participants at the IPT in hoping that these grass-roots accounts of oppression and resistance, and critical analysis of social and economic processes will trigger a much needed debate on broader questions of social transformation in India.